hisself a Utahn.”
“Who?” Roper asked.
“Robert ‘where-the-red-fern-don’t-grow’ Redford!” Lee spat out the words, followed by another errant attempt at the bucket. “Who’d ya think?”
“I don’t think he’s so bad,” Doug Roper declared, “he means well. But, I suspect your little operation here is goin’ to suffer more than Ruby and me.”
“I’ll be fine,” Bucky Lee said, twisting off the top of his can of Skoal. “I’se gone and got myself diversified, like them Wall Street boys.”
“Diversified?” Ruby asked.
“I’se got a new line,” Bucky said, putting a pinch between his tongue and cheek, then went back to his meat. “Don’t youse worry none about me. Soon I’ll be making six figures and youse guys will be comin’ to me beggin’ for a loan and of course I’ll say no.”
“That’ll be the day,” Ruby muttered.
“How you going to make that kind of money?” Roper asked.
“Confidential,” Bucky Lee said. “Like they say in the marines, don’t show, don’t kill.
“As usual,” Ruby declared, “you’re all mixed up.”
“You’ll see,” Bucky Lee insisted, “All I can tell you it has something to do with rocks.”
“Rocks!” Ruby exclaimed. “Are you crazy?”
“Clinton definitely said there would be no mining,” Roper insisted.
“These ain’t just any rocks,” Lee explained. “These are rare and there’s no mining and that’s the beauty of it and that’s all I’m goin’ to say about that.”
“If I were you, I’d be more worried about the BLM closing down some of my old but profitable businesses,” Roper said.
“What’a youse mean?” Lee asked, as he sliced off another hunk of venison and continued cranking the grinder.
“Hell, Bucky,” Ruby cut it. “Even before the Monument, what you were doing here was illegal.”
“What’a youse talkin’ bout?” Bucky placed meat-flecked hands on his hips, feigning shock.
“I doubt this will come as a surprise, but there’s laws against selling illegal hides and pelts,” Roper answered.
“I don’t sell nothin’ but what I’se got government permits for. There ain’t no law agin trappin’ an I know, there ain’t no law agin making deer sausage or salami any more’n there’s a law agin you makin’ that awful homemade wine of yours, Rube.”
“You’re right,” Ruby agreed. “But there is a law against poaching and you can’t sell wild game in Utah and you can’t transport it across state lines either.”
“I don’t do neither,” Lee declared brashly, wiping his hands on his Levis. He finally had the mixing tub two-thirds full of ground meat. “I make meat products for my own use and when I do occasionally do a little retailin’, I just charge a small processin’ fee, no charge at all for the meat. You know, for my time and the pork filler. Nobody gives me free pig meat.”
“Some might call that splitting legal hairs,” Roper concluded as he looked over Lee’s shoulder, eyeing the tub.
“Or some might just call it plain bullshit,” Ruby said.
“You can’t make bulls out’a bullshit,” Bucky replied.
“Jesus,” Ruby said, crossing herself in the traditional Catholic way. “Just once, I wish you’d make some sense.”
“Well it’s no more bullshit than those cougar hides you bring in for me to sell. I suppose you got a permit for all them?”
“I thought you just sold your own trappings,” Roper said, breaking into a disarming grin that seemed to instantly expunge the sadness from his eyes and fill the empty hollows of his cheeks.
“I have a right to protect my calves,” Ruby retorted quickly, ignoring Roper.
“Is that what you call it?” Lee sneered. “It’s just fortunate, I guess, that one cat hide brings youse more money than a whole yearlin’ calf on the hoof.”
Plainly irritated, Ruby turned and stomped away, weaving around clumps of floor debris. A half dozen rapid steps and she was clear across the one room cabin, another half dozen and she was quickly back.
“If it’s so risky, why do you fence them? And why is it you always have fresh sausage meat year around?”
“I have my sources,” Lee said, unperturbed. Deftly he cut a slab of pork loin and began pushing it in the hopper with one hand and grinding with the other. “You need to add a third of pork, venison doesn’t have enough fat.”
“It’s September eighteenth,” Ruby persisted, “a full month before hunting season. How is it you’ve got fresh venison?”
“Like I said, I got my sources. Hell, Rube, you’re part Injun. You of all people ought’ta know not everyone needs a huntin’ license.”
“I’m a quarter Cherokee, you know the Trail of Tears. Not related to the local Indians.”
“The trail of what? Well anyway, that’s almost like being part Injun.”
Ruby shook her head in disbelief then added, “so the Utes just give you their meat?”
“More like sell it. Navajos too.” The mixing vessel was now full and Lee used a large manual mixer to blend the ground pork and venison. “Looks good, huh?” he said, smiling through his stained picket-fence teeth.
“So the Indians sell you their deer meat,” Roper said thoughtfully. “But when you retail, you just charge for processing and not for the meat. Sounds like you’d need an extra high processing fee just to break even.”
“S’mantics,” Lee said, adding some sage and red pepper, “word games. I’ll fry up some fresh and let youse try it. S’on sale to my friends, youse know.”
“Yeah, I’ll bet it is,” Ruby snickered.
“Just need to add my secret spices,” Bucky divulged as he retrieved a Mason jar from the cabinet directly behind him. Opening the jar, he took a pinch of what appeared to be a mixture of various kinds of dried leaves, pulverized them by rolling back and forth in his palms then sprinkled the flakes on the ground meat.
“Smells like sage,” Roper suggested.
“No, it smells more like sagebrush and after a good rain,” Ruby declared, as the piquant musky odor diffused through the cabin.
Suddenly the over head lights flickered off then came back on for a moment then abruptly went dead.
“Generator’s
